Microsoft Demos Native Windows 8 ISO & VHD Support (Video)

Yesterday we had reported about Windows 8 Ribbon Explorer UI video demo published by Microsoft and now here is yet another Windows 8 feature demo video published at Building Windows 8 by Rajeev from Microsoft. The video demonstrates Windows 8 support for ISO and VHD storage formats. ISO (International Organization for Standardization) has become most popular format for storing copies of most optical disc such as DVD, CDs. An ISO file is simply a disc image stored as a file, composed of all of the contents of a CDROM or DVD disc. You can also think of an ISO file as a full-fidelity image (digital copy) of the optical disc.

Until now users need to download third party tools to open, mount or create ISO files but considering increase in popular of ISO format & huge demand for native ISO support, Microsoft Windows 8 team has decided to add native capability to mount ISO & VHD files. One can quickly access ISO content on Windows 8 just double clicking on ISO file & Windows 8 will create virtual CD/DVD drive which acts as real physical drive is connected to machine.

Similarly when one double clicks on VHD files Windows 8 will create virtual hard disk and user can access or modify content of VHD file

Check out below Demo Video on Windows 8 VHD & ISO Format support

Windows 8 ISO & VHD Native Support Video

Microsoft Demos Windows 8 Ribbon Explorer UI (Video)

Today on “Building Windows 8” Blog Microsoft’s Alex Simon, part of Windows 8 Development team published demo video of Windows 8 Explorer Ribbon features & improvements. Speaking about Windows Explorer, Alex says, despite of having 200 commands in explorer the larger part of Windows customer base uses small number of Windows Explorer Commands of which Copy, Paste, Delete, Refresh, Rename accounts for about 81.8% of command use.  Also the analysis on command entrypoint usage suggested that maximum users invoke commands from non-primary UI of explorer.

This clearly suggests there is room to enhance Windows Explorer. From Windows XP to Vista to Windows 7 Microsoft has bought several design changes to Windows Explorer may not substantial one but Windows 8 with Metro UI definitely calls of a complete overhaul. Hence the new ribbon interface with useful commands will be the part of Windows 8 Explorer UI.

The ribbon interface also provides much more reliable and usable touch-only interface than pull-down menus and context menus. The new ribbon in Windows 8 Explorer will offer various tabs which will group the similar commands; such as home tab which will be house of all file and folder management commands like Copy, Create New folder, Movie Folder, Delete etc.

Share Tab has access to quickly sharing, email zip. View tab to adjust icon size, preview pane and other commands and context tab which will offer file specific commands.

Check out below demo video of Windows 8 Ribbon Explorer